Gacha Harem System

The four of them snapped into high alert in the same instant.

Those without weapons had it immediately appear in their hands.

Lukas's poleaxe came out of his spatial ring already gripped in both hands.

Melody brandished her mace and Akira's flail was ready for anything that came at them.

Karrakas had his bow up with an arrow nocked before he'd even finished realizing what he was hearing.

He held the bow loose, ready to shoot in an instant.

Nobody said anything, their eyes immediately on the darkness ahead of them.

The scratching grew louder and closer, with an uneven, dragging rhythm.

The atmosphere was tense. Here they were, waiting in the light, while whatever was coming was in the darkness.

This meant their opponent would see them before they saw the opponent.

Akira dimmed her sun ball with a thought, and Lukas and Melody followed her lead, the three lights fading to a low glow that lowered their visibility.

There was no sense in standing in a lit target while something approached from the dark.

They waited.

A few seconds later, a light appeared ahead.

It was tiny, a single small flame hovering in the dark, swaying slightly as it drifted closer with the scratching sound. It looked like fire.

Then, as the fire grew closer, they could make out shapes around it, and a group of five people limped into the edge of their light.

All of them were E-ranks, and they were all hurt.

They moved in a knot, supporting each other, with one man's arm slung over a companion's shoulders, and another pressing a wadded cloth against a gash along her forearm.

Their armor was covered with thin, ragged cuts. One of them was limping heavily, but nobody was being carried, and nobody was bleeding out.

They had painful injuries, but not fatal ones.

The tension went out of the tunnel by degrees. Lukas lowered the poleaxe, while Karrakas eased the arrow off the string and stepped forward.

"What happened to you guys?"

The Climber at the front, a wiry man with fewer injuries than the rest, looked them over before answering.

"We walked into a Crystal Bat ambush deep inside A1729." He shook his head slowly, like he was still trying to understand what had happened. "Something's wrong out there. The bats have gotten smarter."

"Smarter how?" Karrakas asked.

"They went for our lights first." The man gritted his teeth as he spoke. "Everyone knows the beasts always attack living things and mostly ignore the lights, but with their first pass, they swarmed our lanterns and torches, knocking out every source we had before we'd even landed a hit."

"Then when the place was dark, they came at us from everywhere. We were sitting ducks. We couldn't see them, and we definitely couldn't tell the beasts from the walls."

He gestured at his battered party. "We're lucky we found the tunnel wall and fought our way back along it. They were too coordinated. Crystal Bats usually don't fight like that."

From the middle of the group, one of the injured Climbers lifted his head. His voice came out as a croak.

"They were being controlled. I'm telling you. Something was directing them."

"Stop that." The wiry man turned on him immediately. "That's impossible, and you know it."

"Do you have any idea what kind of skill it would take to control that many beasts at once? To have them that coordinated, in the dark?" He shook his head. "I don't think the few Adept with that kind of power would bother with the Crystal Caves. They're just bats acting strange, that's all."

The injured man didn't argue, but he didn't look convinced either.

The wiry man exhaled, then turned back to the four of them.

"Either way. Be careful out there. Keep an eye on your lights, and don't let them cluster. Whatever's going on with those beasts, it's not what the information packets say."

"We'll keep it in mind," Karrakas said. "Do you need help getting back? We can spare—"

"We'll manage. It's a straight walk from here." The man nodded towards the tunnel ahead of him. "I'd rather you kept your strength. You'll need it more than us."

With that, the group shuffled past them, the small flame bobbing in front of them, and the scratching of their dragging steps fading down the tunnel.

As for the group of four, they stood there for a moment, watching them go.

When they were out of sight, Akira turned to Karrakas.

"Was it, though?" she asked. "The behavior of the Crystal Bats. Was it actually strange, or just unlucky?"

Karrakas lowered his bow fully, thinking about it.

"It's a bit strange," he admitted. "Genuinely strange. Beasts in crystal caves don't attack light sources. It's one of the first things anyone learns about hunting down here. Light doesn't threaten them, so they ignore it. Some are even drawn to it."

He frowned into the dark ahead. "Targeting the lights first, deliberately, as an opening move, before touching a single Climber? I've never heard of that."

"So the injured one was right," Melody said quietly. "Something was controlling them."

"I didn't say that." Karrakas shook his head. "The other one was right too. The kind of skill needed to coordinate a whole swarm mid-flight is usually far beyond anything at Adept level. Especially for bats that are still alive. If they were dead, they could've been attributed to a [Necromancer] or something like that."

"But beasts do change. It's rare and slow, but it happens. A population learns something over generations, or a stronger variant emerges and the others copy its behavior."

"There's no telling whether these bats are actually growing smarter or whether that party ran into a fluke." He exhaled. "It's not impossible. That's the honest answer. I just don't like any of the possibilities."

"Neither do I," Akira said.

"Then we're in agreement. We'll be twice as alert." He glanced at her with a nod. "As someone recently taught me."

They continued on their way.

They went deeper into the tunnel, following the map when they reached branches in the paths.

The sun balls drifted along above them, and by unspoken agreement, all three were kept spread apart now, instead of clustered into a single target.

After some time, Karrakas slowed.

"We're coming up on the first water source," he said. "The one circled on your map. It's a small cavern, with a natural pond. It's a common rest point, so try not to make too much noise. If anyone else is using it, we don't want to walk in looking like an ambush, or they'll just attack us."

The tunnel widened ahead, the walls pulling apart, and they stepped through into a small cavern.

It was beautiful.

A small pond sat in the middle of the space, its surface dark as it rippled.

The moment their sun balls drifted in, light scattered across the cavern in every direction.

The crystal walls caught it and threw it between themselves, reflections layering over reflections.

Points of light glittered from a hundred facets at once, like the inside of a cut gemstone.

Melody's breath caught. "Oh, this is—"

A loud splash erupted from the pond.